You've got mail no more: AOL to shutter dial-up internet service
AOL is set to shut down the dial-up internet service that once was the symbol of internet connectivity after over 40 years.
A company webpage titled "Dial-up Internet to be discontinued" states that the service will stopped on Sept. 30.
The company says on the page that the shutdown follows a routine evaluation of its products and services.
The hum and whir of a dial up modem was how many people first connected to the internet.
At its height, a dial-up connection could manage up to 56 kilobits per second under ideal conditions, according to Apple Insider. Modern connections are measured up to gigabits per second.
The consumer-friendly internet connection service provided what the tech news website called a "walled garden" internet experience through trial CDs in the early days of internet proliferation. According to Apple Insider, the company had 10 million customers by 1995.
New technologies and faster speeds rendered dial-up a connection of the past. As the technology landscape changed, so did the status of AOL.
AOL merged with Time Warner in 2000 at the height of the internet bubble. The failure of the merger, which caused Time Warner to spin out AOL in 2009, was so spectacular it led to retrospectives both 10 and 15 years later.
In 2015, Verizon purchased AOL for $4.4 billion. At the time, AOL still had 2.1 million dial-up customers, according to CNBC.
When Apollo Global Management purchased portions of Verizon Media assets, including AOL in 2021, the financial news outlet reported that dial-up users were down to "the low thousands."